CHICAGO – Nine American citizens residing from Massachusetts on the East Coast to Seattle on the West Coast today joined together in an effort to force the federal government to implement changes to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) and the policies of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that will ensure that these innocent Americans are not subjected to humiliating and unnecessary detentions and harassment by federal officials when they re-enter the United States. The Americans challenging the government system filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago today, after having been subjected to repeated lengthy stops, questioning, body searches, handcuffing, excessive force, separation from family members and confinement by customs officers when they return to the United States from travel abroad. The plaintiffs all report being unnecessarily delayed, while some recite tales of being shackled to a chair for hours and others had their automobiles surrounded by agitated guards with firearms – a frightening sight for their young children.

The complaint filed today builds on a lawsuit filed last year by Akif Rahman, a native born United States citizen. Since March 2004, Mr. Rahman was detained and questioned by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials on five separate occasions as he re-entered the country after business or personal trips abroad. Four of the detentions lasted unnecessarily long periods of time (anywhere from two to six hours), longer than was reasonably required for determining Mr. Rahman’s identity and allowing him to proceed into the United States. On one occasion, Mr. Rahman was subjected to unnecessary excessive force during a body search and shackled to a chair for approximately three hours while isolated from his wife and children.

“The physically threatening nature of these stops and detentions seem to be escalating,� said Dr. Sammy Rehman, a radiologist from the Chicago area, one of those joining the lawsuit today.

On June 9, 2005, Dr. Rehman and his family, his mother and his mother-in-law were returning to the United States from a visit in Canada. After Dr. Rehman gave a border officer his passport, agitated federal agents surrounded the family car, holding their hands on their holstered guns. One agent identified Dr. Rehman as “A and D� (“armed and dangerous�). Armed guards then led Dr. Rehman away from his family and detained him for approximately two hours.

“This event was terrifying for me, for my wife and for our 7 year-old son.�

According to the lawsuit filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, the plaintiffs represent thousands of individuals who are stopped, questioned, abused and harassed at points of entry to the country each year – action that results from flaws in the federal government’s Terrorism Screening Center (TSC). According to a U.S. Department of Justice report, the TSC administers a database with more than 200,000 names, persons who are claimed by the government to have “any degree of terrorism nexus.� The report identifies the two major flaws in the system which are the focus of the lawsuit. First, the process for classifying these individuals is flawed, resulting in many individuals being “over-classified,� considered dangerous when they pose no real threat to our nation. Second, mistakes in the database operated by the TSC cause many individuals to be “misidentified,� and subject to more scrutiny than is necessary. As a result of these two problems, the plaintiffs in today’s lawsuit collectively have been stopped and questioned on more than thirty (30) occasions, despite the fact that they are law abiding citizens, always cleared for re-entry to the U.S. after these recurring and punitive detentions.

The ACLU plaintiffs represented today include: M. Akifur Rahman of suburban Chicago and his wife Masooda; Niaz Anwar of suburban Boston; Khalid Bhatti, a physician in gastroenterology in Troy, New York; Shimrote Ishaque, a pharmacist in Seattle, Washington; Osama Jammal, an educational video producer from suburban Chicago; Dr. Elie Khoury, an OB/GYN in practice in Detroit, and his wife Farideh Khoury; and, Dr. Sammy Rehman, a radiologist, and his wife Riffat Mehmood of suburban Chicago.

“It simply is not necessary for DHS to detain these Americans for lengthy periods of time in the fashion in which they have been treated,� said Harvey Grossman of the ACLU of Illinois in announcing the lawsuit. “The fault lies in the chaotic operations of the TSC and inappropriate responses by the CBP. Indeed, FBI Director Mueller recently declined to predict that the problems in the TSC could be repaired in five years. Should these individuals be compelled to bear repeated abuse simply because the FBI and DHS cannot correct its own mistakes?�

The amended complaint comes today in a lawsuit filed on Mr. Rahman’s behalf in June 2005. The plaintiffs ask the federal court to order the FBI and DHS to adopt polices that ensure expeditious reentry to the United States for U.S. citizens who are over-classified or misidentified, and to institute adequate training and supervision to ensure that U.S. citizens are not unduly detained and harassed upon entering the United States.

Roger Pascall, Everett Cygal, Paula Ketcham, and Joshua Lee of the Chicago law firm Schiff Hardin LLP are assisting the ACLU of Illinois in this case, along with Junaid M. Afeef of Hoffman Estates, Sarah Wunsch of the ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts, Kary Moss and Michael Steinberg of the ACLU Fund of Michigan, Noel Salah of Detroit and Aaron H. Caplan of the ACLU of Washington in Seattle.

To read more about the plaintiffs in today's complaint and the difficulties they faced re-entering the country, Click Here!.

To read the complaint itself Click Here!